Today, aircraft reconnaissance is used in a variety of different situations. These can relate to military as well as civilian applications. Searches may be directed toward individuals, troops, vehicles, or other objects. Furthermore, aircraft reconnaissance may be used for such purposes as detecting fires at an early stage, or to simply search a predetermined area of a terrain of particular interest.
It is foreseen that a common future use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV's) will be for searching a predetermined area of a terrain of particular interest. However, it is presently difficult to control UAV's in a way that produces a time- and cost-effective search of a predetermined area.
JP 2002211494 schematically depicts route planning for an unmanned helicopter wherein the flight is preformed using paths which minimize the total length of the route.